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Cowslip

Cowslip

Primula veris

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How common: Very common

Cowslip is a spring-blooming primrose with sweet-scented yellow flowers. It grows naturally across much of Europe and western Asia, most often in old meadows and light woodland. You’ll often notice its nodding bunch of bright yellow flowers in early spring.

Did you know?

  • Provincial flower of Åland.
  • The flowers are fragrant and usually show tiny orange spots in the throat.

About the species

Identification

A low, long-lived plant with a ground-level circle of crinkled, oval leaves that have blunt, uneven teeth and are paler and softly hairy underneath when young. One leafless stem, 15–40 cm tall, carries a drooping cluster of many small, bright yellow flowers. Each flower is about 1–1.5 cm wide and has five rounded lobes with tiny orange spots inside; there is a pale green tube behind the petals. The flowers are sweetly scented. Later, a small round seed case sits inside the same tube. Compared with oxlip, cowslip’s flowers are deeper yellow, spotted and hang; oxlip’s are paler and face outward. Common primrose has single flowers on separate short stalks. Flowers in Finland in May–June.

Plant group

Herbaceous plants

Habitat

meadow

Flowering

May–Jun

About the habitat

Open to lightly shaded places: dry to fresh meadows, pastures, scrubby edges, open woods and roadsides, from lowlands up to mountain slopes. Native in the southwest; common only in Åland and Southwest Finland. Elsewhere mostly planted or escaped near dwellings.

Sources

Photo: Avetisyan Ani, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Common Cowslip.jpg

Text: Pinkka: Laaja maatalouslajintuntemus 4 op - Koppisiemeniset, CC BY 4.0 https://laji.fi/taxon/MX.38655

Text: Wikipedia (Finnish), CC BY-SA 4.0 https://fi.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kev%C3%A4tesikko

See also